http://ndisotell.github.io/E-pseudo
Alloparental care behavior has been documented in several clades of animals, including fishes. Despite the increased energy cost of caring for more offspring, this behavior of raising non-descendent young also has potential benefits, including attraction of mates or reduced egg predation by dilution effects. The Egg-mimic Darter, Etheostoma pseudovulatum, is an imperiled darter species restricted to only five tributaries of the Duck river where they occur in rocky pools of small to medium-sized streams. Male Egg-mimic Darters and those of other species of clade Goneaperca construct nests under rocks and guard eggs until hatched. Two species from this clade, E. virgatum and E. olmstedi, exhibit allopaternal care; whether this is a common strategy to all members of the clade is not known. Furthermore, the potential benefits of kin-selection and how nest density or male size influences such behaviors have not been tested.
We will use microsatellite loci to obtain genotypes from the eggs, collected at the same locality from 2015 and 2019, of 17 and 21 nests respectively. Other non-guarding males and females from both collection events have also been captured to identify the following: (1) if allopaternal care occurs in this species, (2) if kin-selection is one benefit of allopaternal care, (3) if male size correlates to the proportion of non-descendant eggs in a nest, and (4) if distance between nests influences allopaternal care frequency.
To date, eggs from 38 nests, the guarding male for each, and 19 other non-guarding males have been collected from both years. DNA was extracted from non-target individuals from a second location and used as a template to optimize primers for 18 microsatellite loci that were variable within the focal taxon. The preliminary genotypic data has been generated for 4 of the 18 loci of the focal individuals from the year 2019 and subjected to parentage analyses using COLONY (V2.0) to address our objectives.
The bridge showing the most downstream portion of the site.